India’s ‘Golden Boy’ Neeraj Chopra added another feather to his cap on Wednesday as he won the gold medal in Javelin throw at the Asian Games 2023.
Chopra topped the charts with a throw of 88.88m while another Indian Kishore Kumar Jena finished second with a best throw of 87.54m.
Despite winning the accolade at the Asian Games, Chopra was not happy with the local Chinese officials during the match as his first throw was deemed invalid due to a technical glitch.
Chopra had managed to cross the 85m mark in his first attempt but it did not count which left the Olympic gold medalist furious.
Neeraj Chopra hits out at Chinese officials after winning Asian Games gold medal
Speaking to reporters after the event, Chopra expressed his frustration at the local officials as he said,
Looked good, I’ll look at the video again to see how far it might have gone. Surprisingly, they didn’t measure. I am still puzzled, apparently, the second athlete threw before they could even measure my throw and they lost the mark then.
I protested but then it was breezy and other athletes’ were cooling down and it was getting unfair on them. So they offered me a re-throw and I accepted. It’s the first time something like this has happened with me in a competition this big.
He added,
It happened with Jyothi, me, and Jena. So there’s something wrong but still, we have shown how hard we’ve worked and won medals. I haven’t seen anything like this in a big tournament. Athletes can get mentally down, even Jyothi was affected.